We're on a Roll...

Avid blog followers may remember this post from back in August of 2008... Those oversized maps and documents that we unrolled for the first time so many months ago are finally receiving conservation treatment!

The rolled documents arrived to HSP housed in long plastic bags, tied at both ends with cotton tape.

Each document is removed from the bag, slowly unrolled and weights are used to hold the document open.

Most of the maps are covered with a layer of dust, soot, and dirt that is removed with vulcanized rubber erasers and Nilfisk vaccuum.

The documents are rolled around 4" diameter acid-free, lignen-free archival tubes with a layer of Microchamber paper and an outer layer of Tyvek. The tube is cut to size for each document using a hacksaw and then sanded smooth.

Cotton tape is used to secure the Tyvek around the rolled document. The newly-housed documents will be labeled and stored on shelves.

Greenwich Island Meadows surveys

Over the past few weeks, I have been working on the papers of the Brown and Johnson families that are included in the Chew Papers. Mary Johnson Brown Chew's family and ancestors owned large sections of what is now the First Ward of Philadelphia, Southwark, Passyunk, the Navy Yard, and Tinicum. David Sands Brown, among others, developed land along the Delaware River to accommodate his growing manufacturing businesses, which were headquartered in Gloucester City, New Jersey.


This survey shows William Jones' Meadow, which is part
of Greenwich Island (Surveyed by John Lukens, 1770)

This land passed down through the Johnson family from William Jones (a grazier in Kingsessing Township) to his daughters Mary (Morris, Pancoast) and Elizabeth (Garrett), then to Martha Morris, who married Joseph Johnson, a ship chandler. Johnson ran a booming business from his wharves in South Philadelphia during the late-18th century into the mid-19th century, and his descendants further developed the land as industrialization allowed for more manufactured goods to be moved from place to place. (Stay tuned for an upcoming post on the companies associated with David Sands Brown and the development of Gloucester City.)

As I was sorting through the various deeds that make up a large portion of the material in this series, I was trying to create a mental image of how all of these plots of land fit together. One day, I found a series of maps and surveys that helped me to create a picture of the area the deeds described, and I realized how vastly different the land is today. Aside from the Tinicum Wildlife Refuge, this land has given way to industrial development. Here are a few representations of William Jones' meadows as they were in the mid-1700s.


The first survey was done by John Lukens in 1768.
The second is the original survey done by Nicholas Scull in 1759.

Last night, as I was returning from the New England Archivists' Conference, my flight passed over the area that these surveys portray. I looked out the window and imagined what these waterways and marsh lands would look like without the grid of roads, parking lots, and buildings. I tried to conjure the land as the Swedes found it, before they drained marsh land for grazing. I perform these kind of thought experiments a lot as I sift through documents that shift my relationship to the land that I walk on every day, navigating the grid of Philadelphia's streets, or hanging in the air above this place that is at once so familiar, and so surprisingly new.


This lithographic plan shows the emergence of the South Philadelphia
that we know today. This "Plan of proposed Wharves & Docks with
Railroad Connections in the First Ward" was made for Titus S. Emery
by L.N. Rosenthal's Lithographic shop in 1867.

The Chew Turkies

In the past few months, there have been an extraordinary number of turkey references in the Chew collection. In celebration of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, Leah and I decided to share some of them here.

The first document is selected from a larger group of surveys, agreements, and correspondence regarding a tract of land the Chews owned called "Turkey Nest."



I found this initially interesting because many of the tracts in Delaware and Maryland have "Neck" as part of the name (e.g. "Rich Neck"). I assume that the "neck" refers to the areas where land juts out into a body of water. When I first glanced at this group of documents, I thought this tract was called "Turkey Neck."

A more personal reference to turkeys in the collection comes from Samuel Chew's correspondence. He owned a farm in Maryland that was operated by John Mason. John experienced many upheavals in his work as a farmer--one of the more dramatic situations involved the barn, sheds, house, and hay catching fire. He lost most of his farm, but saved the animals and some of the structures. A relatively minor incident, by comparison, was the death of several turkeys. In his letter to Samuel Chew, he writes, "You may remember my showing you some Turkies I purchased. To my utter dismay, I found. on going out in the morning Two of my pets. dead. Upon investigating I discovered the painters had been here the day before. + had emptied the remains of paint on the ground...the Turkies had eaten too freely of white lead--no other casualties have occurred." (Dec. 1873) A sad tale, indeed.









































All silliness aside, we hope you have a wonderful holiday. A little Chew-inspired card from Leah:

the subtle beauty of surveys

This project has introduced me to many types of materials and aspects of history that I was previously unfamiliar with. It has also been teaching me a lot about balance and letting go of rigid ideas of perfection. Some days, it is easy to get lost in the enormity of the task that is processing a 400 linear foot collection. I panic about deadlines and not meeting all of my goals.

Yesterday, as we were putting Benjamin Chew Jr.'s papers to rest, I found a number of folders of oversize material that still needed to be integrated. It would have been easy for me to become frustrated that I had forgotten where every piece of paper was, but then I opened one of the folders and found this:


Survey of Chewton, Beaver County, Pennsylvania, [n.d.]

I don't know why I am so affected by surveys. I have fallen in love with their subtle, sweet beauty. I am always moved by the depictions of trees and houses, the meticulous detail with which the surveyors rendered their subjects. It could be that I've developed this interest because of the sheer number of surveys in the collection, but I think it is more that they offer such a simple view of boundaries and the space between place and place.